Nonfiction: Zillow Talk; The New Rules of Real Estate, by Spencer Rascoff & Stan Humphries

Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate
Spencer Rascoff & Stan Humphries
ISBN: 9781455574742
Read January 29, 2015

Lots of information that isn't relevant to rural markets, but the tips and tricks about listing houses is very useful.

Got the uneasy impression at intervals that I was reading a book-length advertisement (which, to be fair, it IS), but they did an admirable job using the book itself to provide the actual facts and statistics and information they promise without referencing back to their website/business.  I appreciated that a great deal.

They also focused on how important agents are to the process, as I think they get a lot of kickback from that direction regarding average people getting all this valuable information and deciding to go it alone.  They emphasize that like a travel agent, they aren't exactly necessary to the process, but if you want to be as well-protected, well-informed, efficient and efficacious as possible, it's best to keep company with a professional.

Quite readable, very personable, and lots of good examples and hypotheticals.  Made me a feel a lot more informed about the real estate market.

Nonfiction: The Body Language Handbook, Gregory Hartley & Maryann Karinch

The Body Language Handbook
Gregory Hartley & Maryann Karinch
ISBN: 9781601630766
Read January 27, 2015

Interesting for three main reasons: the discussion of culturally-different expressions and gestures, because of the inclusion of case-study photographs, and the use of models from different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds to show the huge variability even in the "unconscious" gestures and expressions that humans use.

The explanations of the model photographs were particularly good.

Classic SF: Power Play, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Power Play

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

ISBN: 0345388267

Read January 28, 2015
Third (final) book of the Petaybee trilogy (Powers that Be, Power Lines)

Oof.  The well water gets a bit gritty towards the bottom.  Overall storyline concludes nicely - the assholes from the two previous books hire a notorious space pirate to kidnap Yana, Marmion, Diego, and Bunny.  Meanwhile, the planet and the people on the surface (mainly Sean, Johnny, and 'Cita/Aoife/Goat-Dung/Youngling) repel invaders intent on despoiling the ample hunting grounds and medicinal biota of the planet.

Plot-devices that were faintly apparent and easy to overlook in the first books got much worse: the slang is dated and ill-used, the language (especially dialogue) is stilted and ridiculous, and situations are obviously contrived for effect rather than sense.

Despite that, and the many eye-rolls and sighs, I did enjoy reading it, and I'm glad I finished off the set.  Namid especially is a good character, and it was nice to see the religious supplicants actually being useful characters (although we never find out what happens with "Brother Granite" who isn't who he appears to be).

Also, with the epilogue, can we stop with the fantasy of women giving birth with no pain and it being a magical dreamy perfect experience that ends with them immediately rising from the birthing pool looking "flat-bellied and lithe again"?  Seriously?  It's patronizing.

Nonfiction: What Every BODY is Saying, Joe Navarro

What Every BODY is Saying
Joe Navarro
ISBN: 9780061438295
Read January 26, 2015
Ex-FBI-agent and Cuban immigrant teaches how to "read" posture and gestures.

There are several books on body language out there, and lots of them have the same basic info as this one (The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara and Allan Pease comes immediately to mind) but this one is different in that Navarro takes the time to get inside the gestures and postures he is describing, and unpacks the psychology and mental gymnastics behind each one.

Super useful, super interesting, and he's quite right that this sort of thing ought to be more commonly known than it is.  At the moment, talented con-men, a few investigative agents, a few more behavioral psychologists, and a whole raft of professional actors know all of these tricks instinctively, or through extended attentive concentrated effort, but the everyday person still thinks that someone who doesn't make eye-contact is lying, or that if someone is nervous during an interview it means that they're guilty.

Much recommended, along with Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear).

Nonfiction: The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth

The Elements of Eloquence
Mark Forsyth
ISBN: 9780425276181 (imported from England)
Read January 23, 2015
Author goes through various rhetorical figures and how they are used.

Lots of Shakespeare in this book, and a decent smattering of classic English lit, some nursery rhymes and political speechifying, and even a few pop standards.

Very useful for a literature/writing craft resource.  I agree heartily with the author that this sort of thing should be consciously taught to anyone who is planning on verbal expression as a large part of their life or profession.

Classic SF: Power Lines, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Power Lines

Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

ISBN: 0345387805

Read January 21, 2015
Second book of the Petaybee trilogy (Powers that Be, Power Play)

Book two of the set was as interesting, perhaps more-so than the first, but suffered from un-wrapped threads at the ending, especially regarding Shush.

Petaybee has just forced a confrontation with Intergal, and they've sent a duo of company execs to determine the best course of action to continue making money from the planet.  The lady capitalist Marmion is our added protagonist, along with Goat-Dung (good grief) and Coaxtl on the planetary side.  Our new antagonists appear in the form of the "ethnographer" Matthew Luzon, and the continuing obstruction of Torkel Whittaker from the first book.

The planet is melting, the growing season is either early or the climate is shifting, and Intergal is desperate to find pockets of colonists who don't believe Petaybee is a benevolent sentient being (since finding anyone who doesn't believe that it's sentient at all is a bust) and Luzon is off to the southern continent to find them.

There are missing siblings, miraculous rescues, pointedly-useful biota, and general asshattery from the corporation.  I thought the pacing was better, and the variety of cultures and attitudes was refreshing, but at the end, there were too many strings to tie up, and some were left to hang, or were tied up in ways that don't make sense even by the very loose plotting standard set by the rest of the book.

Still, fun to read.  I'm going to try the last, just so I can say I finished the trilogy.  

Tuesday Storytime: Friendship

Two new ones, and one that I read somewhat recently, but I like it, and it's short, so I read it again.

Very Special Friends
Jane Chapman  (I'm Not Sleepy, Don't Be Afraid, Little Pip, Bear Feels Sick)
ISBN: 9781561486
Soft-edged woodland creatures in a sweet whimsical gentle woodland world.

Jane Chapman is a gifted illustrator, and her stand-alone books show that she has sweet whimsical stories in her repertoire as well.  She nearly always centers in on the emotional world of children where emotions are primal and happy times seem to last forever, and friendships are the linchpin of the world.  This one is no exception: Mouse heads to the riverbank to wait for her special friends, and is joined in her vigil by Rabbit, Frog, and Turtle.  At the end of a lovely day of visiting and waiting, Mouse announces that she's heading home, and her companions demur, saying that she should keep waiting for her friends.  Mouse answers that she's been with her special friends all day!  Just a smidge on the saccharine side for me to truly adore, but it's sweet and the illustrations are so gentle and happy.


The Story of Fish and Snail
Deborah Freedman
ISBN: 9780670784899
Reviewed here.

Still love this cute story of friends working through their differences (and a nice rip-roarer of an argument) and compromising and growing in order to stay together.  As a thought, it would go very well with Brigitte Weninger & Eve Tharlet's similarly conflict-resolving book, Why Are You Fighting, Davy?


The Very Lonely Firefly
Eric Carle (Mister Seahorse, )
ISBN: 0399227741
Carle's signature illustrations follow a firefly through the night - the last page has battery-operated lights inside a swarm of fireflies.

Carle is always fun.  Here we have a lonesome firefly, just born, seeking out the lights in the night for companionship.  There are all sorts of lights that are NOT fireflies first; porchlights, candles, flashlights, headlights, animal eyes gleaming, fireworks (no lightning tho) before the persistent little creature finds the company they've been searching for.  I never noticed until this reading that the firefly is never gendered during the story, which is always a nice touch.

Classic SF: Powers that Be, Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Powers that Be
Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
ISBN: 078572852X
Read January 16, 2015
First book of the Petaybee trilogy (Power Lines and Power Play)

Really more Science Fantasy than SF, this is very much like Pern in that "psy" type abilities and planetary sentience are treated as having equal possibility with space travel and terraforming.

Most extra-Solar work these days is done by Intergal, a massive company that discovers, colonizes, and exploits the resources of planets across the galaxy.  Our hero is an ex-company soldier, who was injured during a "terrorist attack" on a remote colony world.

Now she's sent to Petaybee, a small rural, backwards ice-ball of a planet, to live out her last few years on the company's dime before her injury does her in.  Except, now that she's here, would she mind horribly integrating with the locals (a bizarro mix of Inuit and Irish cultures) and spying on them because they keep obstructing company efforts to locate and mine the planet's valuable resources?  If so, she'll find that her pension is increased, and she'll get access to the company base, rather than the useless empty company store meant for the locals.

Now, she's stuck between loyalty to her employer, and a growing sense of unease that the company is about to commit a terrible moral offense against a sentient mind.

I enjoyed it enough to pick up the next, but it was a bit weak in places.  It's fairly obvious that the weird Irish/Inuit blend was the reason for the story, and everything else was sketched in to support that odd premise.  The company goons are company goons, the locals are nearly all wonderful people, and the "powers" of the planet and the genetically-altered (good lord the dithering about with genetic manipulation and genetic alteration and adaptations was enough to drive one nuts) residents were even more thinly-related to actual science than the magic dragons of the Pern books.

Fun to read for the history lesson, and to see how far the genre has come; I'm reading Ancillary Justice at the same time, and the contrast is mind-blowing.

  

Tuesday Storytime: Honeybees

A pair of really long books, and one super-short book in the middle to make up for it.  The room was packed today, and lots of wiggle-worms, so hard to say how much of it actually was seen/heard.

The Honeybee Man
Lela Nargi, illustrations by Kyrsten Brooker
ISBN: 9780375849800
Oddly-perspectived-picture-frames focus attention on the tiny bees and the urban environment.

Reviewed here.
Fred lives in Brooklyn with his family: Cat the cat, Copper the dog, and Mab, Nefertiti, and Boadica the queen bees with their hives full of children.  Fred's honeybees travel out through Brooklyn and gather pollen and nectar from neighbors small yards, rooftop gardens, windowboxes, and the linden trees lining the avenues, and even (sometimes, if he's lucky) from the blueberry bushes across town.  Once they've worked all summer, Fred pulls out the frames of honey, caps and spins them, and decants the lovely honey into jars that he gives out to his neighbors one late-August afternoon.  Good, but very wordy, and the illustrations are interesting, but not exactly vibrant - lots of muted colors and flesh-tones and browns and greys of buildings.


 
Bear and Bee
Sergio Ruzzier
ISBN: 9781423159575
Roly-poly bear is offered honey by a friendly little winged bug, but he's worried about the dread bee.

Super short, super cute.  Bear wakes up from his winter nap and is hungry.  A cute little yellow winged creature (sizes are NOT to scale here) offers some honey, and bear is tempted, but he's afraid of the BEE!  He's never seen one, but it's huge, and has fangs, and claws, and never shares honey.  A quick run-down of bear's personal attributes (huge, has fangs, has claws) has him momentarily worried that HE's the BEE!  but his new bug friend reassures him, then cautiously explains the truth, and re-offers the honey.  Now bear has a full tummy, a full mind, and a new friend.  Adorable.


Flight of the Honey Bee
Raymond Huber, illustrated by Brian Lovelock
ISBN: 9780763667603
Beautiful vibrant colors and expressionistic close-ups of bees.

Reviewed here.  A bit long for storytime, especially with a big and energetic group, but it was very well received, and the illustrations especially captured the interest of lots of the kids.  Really well done book, and very glad I'm aware of it.  Nonfiction is so hard to do for this age-group, and I'm always glad to have the chance to do more of it.

New Arrival: Picture Book: The Adventures of Beekle the Unimaginary Friend, Dan Santat

The Adventures of Beekle, The Unimaginary Friend
Dan Santat
ISBN: 9780316199988
Lovely imaginative mixed-media panels, but a strange and meandering storyline.

I'm sadly really unappy about this one.  Spoilers ahoy, so I can ramble.

PLOT: An adipose-looking (ref. Doctor Who) blob person lives on the island of imaginary friends, where they hang about waiting for kids to imagine them, whereupon they are teleported off the island into the real world with their new best friend.  But no one imagines the blob, so he decides to take matters into his own hands and find his friend.  He travels to the real world (done in grey and taupe) where he's stunned by the boring and sad nature of all the grownups, until he finds a park with children, happily accompanied by their imaginary friends (the park is a lovely, but confusing, illustration - it's difficult to tell which constructs are imaginary friends and which are park play equipment) but still no friend.  He climbs a tree to see further, but still no dice, until a little girl comes by, and they sort of awkwardly ease into friendship, she names him Beekle, and they play happily together forever, the end.

Hokay.

First issue - a jungly "exotic" island of creatures who have their own lives and presumably interests and dreams, but live there just waiting for someone they don't know to essentially capture them and spirit them away to a different "civilized" world where they get assigned a name, and are stuck there as best friends forever with no escape is a little Curious George gets kidnapped by the Man in the Big Yellow Hat, yes?  Colonialism is not a cool concept to reference, and while kids are innocent and won't get it, lots of parents (especially parents of color) WILL, and that isn't a great way to start off.  It just - between the "rapture beam" illustration of the imaginary friend who was chosen, and the idea that they don't even have names until a kid names them, but they do have lives and imaginations and willpower and enough determination to take a difficult journey - but no name?  Just... really offputting.

Second issue - I am the first person to sing the praises of picture books with no drama.  Nothing happens, no conflict, everything is peaceful or fun, life is good - I love those books.  But, they have to have a structure that supports the lack of drama or conflict.  This book isn't like that.  It's a journey - an ADVENTURE!  It's in the bloody title already!  But our little blob friend just meanders through everywhere, looking vaguely nonplussed, but not afraid or menaced, or really even very sad, even though the text assures us he is.  If you're going to have an adventure, perhaps it should be adventurous?  I just can't see this holding the attention of a room full of little ones.

Third issue - it's pretty obvious that the intended "moral" of the story is that finding and making friends is sometimes a slow process, and can be awkward.  I got that, and it's a great moral, especially for shy or socially-anxious kids.  However, I think that the framework of the imaginary friend isn't so hot for this message, and in fact, I think that it's sending entirely different messages through the choices of text and illustrations.  Here's why.

First off, since the imaginary friend is our "hero character" for most of the book, that's who the readers will most likely identify with.  He wants a friend, so he looks for one, and then he does a favor for someone, they stand around awkwardly, sort of toe-into the idea of hanging out, then what do they do?  She NAMES him, and they proceed to do everything that she wants to do, in her world, by her rules.  Now our moral message is "find someone that you like, and make them like you by doing everything they ask" which is a great way to keep that book about co-dependency on the re-print list for decades to come.

Secondly, an imaginary friend by nature only has ONE human person that sees them, knows them, and is friends with them.  So not only is our protagonist blob-person stuck with the herculean task of finding the ONE SINGLE RIGHT person, then once found, that's the only friend there is.  And that isn't how it works with kids, nor is that a healthy concept.  Again, the implied message there is that "there's only one bestfriend/soulmate for you, and once you find them, everything will be perfect forever" which is wrong on so many levels that I really don't know where to start.


So - sadly, because it's awfully cute, and I'm especially vulnerable to adorable little almost adiposes - I have to vote to give this one a miss because it just twigs too many weird uncomfortable issues for me to be able to recommend.  

Storytime Potential: Maple, by Lori Nichols

This book came in through delivery, and the cover was so cute, I just had to flip through it.  I'm glad I did, because it's very cute naturey, seasonal, big-sistery book that is sweet and short and perfect to slot into a lot of different themed storytimes.

Maple
Lori Nichols
ISBN: 9780399160851
An almost Precious Moments art-style with calm colors and minimalist backgrounds.

Maple is a sweet girl, and fairly happy with life, and especially happy with her tree - the Maple that was planted when she was born.  It's her partner, her friend.  She lends it her coat in winter, and plays in the shade in summer.  She does wish she had a more active friend, and maple (the tree) does seem a bit lonely out there in the yard by herself.  So Maple is surprised and delighted when a new tree starts sprouting next to maple, and Maple's mom gets pregnant, then delivers a baby sister!  Maple and her new sister now both like to rest in maple's shade, waiting for W/willow to grow up enough to play.

Adorable, sweet, no conflict.  Can't wait to use it.   Would work well with On Meadowview Street, or with Kevin Henke's Chrysanthemum.

Tuesday Storytime: Adopted Families

Another super-specific storytime theme, just because I had the books to do it with.  I've read both A Mother for Choco and Little Miss Spider before, with different storytimes.


A Mother for Choco
Keiko Kasza
ISBN: 0399218416
Adorable, soft-edged anthropomorphic animal mothers, and a cute yellow and blue bird.

Choco is an adorable motherless bird, who is searching the world for his mother.  He finds various animals that look like him in different ways: Mrs. Giraffe is yellow like he is, Mrs. Walrus (grumpy!) has puffy cheeks like his, but all of them kindly point out their differences and demur - that is, until Choco sees Mrs. Bear.  He isn't even going to ask her - even he can tell she looks nothing like him, but she comforts him and asks him how a mother would act.  After meeting her other three children (spoiler alert: a pig, a hippo, and an alligator), Choco realizes that love and kindness are more important in a mother than physical appearance.  Cute and just on the edge of moralizing - a line Kasza walks very well.


We Belong Together: A Book About Adoption and Families
Todd Parr
ISBN: 978036016681
Faux-childish stick figures in vibrant nonrealistic primary colors illustrate various families.

I have to admit that I'm slightly ashamed of myself, because part of the reason I prefer this to Parr's other "family" book is that this one has all of the non-traditional family arrangements safely in the illustrations, not in the text.  I'm a wimp, I know, but I live in South Carolina.  One must pick battles and fight the long fight.  Besides, this book is delightful even so - the text is lovely.  There are pairs of pages - a child on one "You needed x" and people on the other "We had x to give" followed by a spread that unites them as a family with a simple statement of love.  Example: A page of a purple child with glasses, imagining a dog.  "We belong together because you needed a friend."  Facing page, an orange person with wild hair standing in front of an animal shelter with a similar dog in the window.  "and I knew where to find one."  Next spread, The two people playing catch with the previously imagined dog "We all needed someone to play catch with."  Simple, powerful, and true-hearted without being sappy.


Little Miss Spider
David Kirk
ISBN: 0439083893
Miss Spider's childhood is just as interesting as her adult life!

David Kirk's Miss Spider is one of the only spider books I can actually read and enjoy without any niggling phobia-related nerves or jumpy sensations.  She's cute and small and essentially two yellow dots with anime-eyes.  Here we learn about her childhood.  Born with her zillion brothers and sisters, Little Miss Spider is the only child who is interested in finding her mother - they all scatter, and she's left alone to search, but not for long, as Betty the Beetle comes by and offers to help the sad child.  The text is printed at a HUGE size, and the rhymes are short and simple, as the duo look for a missing mother.  A betrayal by a mean fat spider (why did it have to be fat, one wonders) means peril, but Betty comes to the rescue once again, and offers to be an interim mother.  A moral epilogue at the end is addressed directly to readers, advising them to look for mothers in the "creature that loves you best."

Romance: Where the Horses Run, Kaki Warner

Where the Horses Run
Kaki Warner
ISBN: 9780425263273
Series: Heartbreak Creek, #2 (first book in series: Behind His Blue Eyes)
Romance: An ex-Ranger turned horse-whisperer rancher goes to England to find a horse and a lady needing rescue.
Read January 7, 2015.

Picked this up on the strength of the back cover copy and the associated Goodreads reviews (I love negative reviews, they often are much more revealing than the positive ones) in this case, a set of negative reviews griping about the lack of intimate scenes and the slow pace of the story and the focus on elements of the book besides the growing relationship between the two main protagonists.  Really?  Sounds perfect!

Rafe Jessup quit the Rangers after a bloody shootout (one minor complaint from me is that the circumstances of that event remain cloudy) and moved on to his real joy - working with horses.  He's a sort of horse-whisperer with a reputation for helping animals others would have put down or broken.  Based on that, he's hired by an ex-pat Scot from Heartbreak Creek to run his newly established stables, and their first big job is to head over to jolly old England to pick up horses from distressed nobles short on cash-flow.

Josephine Cathcart is the daughter of one such distressed noble - well, actually, they aren't noble, and that's the problem.  Her father worked his way up from a position in the mines to become that disgusting creature known as "new money" and as such, he and Josephine are barely tolerated in polite society, despite the grand house and scrupulously-correct manners and his continued bribes and gifts to fellow noblemen.  Josephine learned her status the hard way as a young girl, smitten by a neighboring young lord, who pledged love, but married a Countess.  Now, with a young bastard son, and her prize stallion ruined by a grueling steeplechase, she is being farmed out for marriage or companionship by her desperate and broke father.

I loved that the story came first (as ridiculous a premise as it is) and I loved the "fish out of water" impact of a Texan in British polite society (he keeps getting himself kicked out of the house) and I loved that the villains were actually three-dimensional people (eventually) and the conundrum was presented as an actual difficult proposition to consider and manage the repercussions, rather than the obvious "marry the Texan and run off" that I worried it would become.

I don't think I'll be reading the first in the series.  The blurb didn't appeal to me, but if there is a subsequent book about our interesting Scots lord and his feisty English wife, I think I might pick that one up.  I am interested in the next book about one of the minor characters, an American-Cherokee warrior and his Quaker, African-American freed-slave lover.  Talk about getting into an interesting political debate there!

  

Tuesday Storytime: More!

This was a gamble, but I think it worked out nicely.

We started with the absolutely stunning More! by I.C. Springman & Brian Lies, hit Vera B. Williams' "More, More, More," Said the Baby in the middle, and ended with Again! by John Prater, which is quite possibly one of my favorite picture books on this earth.

More!
I.C. Springman, illustrated by Brian Lies (Bats at the Library)
ISBN: 9780547610832
Beautifully detailed magpie illustrates various words about quantity by hoarding shiny objects.

I just adore the concept behind this book, and if anyone out there is teaching ESL, this is perfect.  In very little text, and very detailed illustrations, our magpie friend continues to collect various stuff, until the hoarding proves too much for the nest, and mouse friends come in to help shrink the collection.  Truly brilliant, and just a joy to look through at the amazingly detailed illustrations.


"More, More More" Said the Baby
Vera B. Williams
ISBN: 9780688091736
Blotchy scritchy messy colorful and blocky painting style enlivens three short stories about babies.

We have three babies (white boy, black girl, asian girl), with three caretakers (a father, a grandmother, and a mother) and each gets a short story about how their caretaker looks out for them and interacts lovingly with them, with the babies ending each segment wanting "More, More, More" - it's sweet and short and lovely.  A Caldecott Honor book.



Again! 
John Prater
ISBN: 0764152793
Reviewed here.

Grandbear's patient attention and dedication to Baby Bear's messy games is a joy to read, and I love how the soft-edged fuzzy illustrations contrast so well with both Williams' vibrant loose intensity and Lies' precise and engrossing details.


The only real difficulty with this storytime was finding a coloring sheet to match the off-the-wall theme!